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In future, tourists bound northward will be able to reach Neussargues on the Clermont and Nimes railway by a direct line from Mende and St. Flour. As this new line is not yet completed, and I had set my heart upon revisiting Rodez and Vic-sur-Cere, we took the more circuitous route, going over the same ground I had traversed the year before.
Rustic inns, or rather pensions, may be had at Vic-sur-Cere, in which the tourist is wholesomely lodged and handsomely 'tabled' at a cost that would enrapture Mr. Joseph Pennell. Two or three hundred visitors, chiefly from the neighbouring towns, spend the summer holidays here, one and all disappearing about the middle of September.
Vic-sur-Cere, half an hour distant from Aurillac, is an earthly paradise, a primitive Eden, as yet unspoiled by fashion and utilitarianism.
These differences cannot fail to strike the traveller who journeys from Rodez to Vic-sur-Cere; a charming bit of railway it is, especially in autumn, when the chestnut woods begin to show autumn crimson and gold. And Vic-sur-Cere, too, delights even more on a second visit. The spot is indeed a corner of Eden a happy valley, to be transformed, alas! into a miniature Vals.
Through the smooth meadows between the encompassing hills winds the musically-named stream, the Iraliot, and from end to end the broad expanse of green is scented with newly-mown hay. The delightful scenery, the purity of the air, the excellent quality of the waters, ought to turn Vic-sur-Cere into a miniature Vichy.
Our good hosts were very anxious that we should see everything. Accordingly we were escorted to one of the numerous silk factories in the town. Here, as at Vic-sur-Cere the year before, and in places to be described later on, we were rather treated as guests in a country house than Nos. 1 and 2 of an ordinary hotel.
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